Mall Abductions

This is an urban legend, there are no documented cases of
any of these happening (as at 5th May 2001).
However, please treat any similar approaches as you would any other unknown person, and be suspicious.

In
many ways these methods are very similar to the 'Not
Perfume' urban legend.

Warning to ALL women AND their children

I thought this is something we should all
be aware of......

Make sure you read the entire thing.

Towards the end is really important!!!!!

The notice below was posted on JCPenney's e-mail this morning to all Female Associates. I wanted to pass the
information on to you.

Recently on Inside Edition there was an article about several new
scams to abduct women.

In one, a man comes up to a woman in a Mall or Shopping Center and
asks If she likes pizza. When she says she does, he offers her $10000 to shoot a commercial for Pizza, but they need
to go outside where the lighting is better. When the woman goes out of the mall she is
abducted and assaulted.

Another ploy is a very nicely dressed man asks a woman if she
would be in a Public Service announcement to discourage drug use. The man explains that they don't want professional
actors or celebrities; they want the average mother to do this. Once
she leaves the mall she is a victim.

The third ploy, the most successful, a frantic man comes running
in to the mall and asks a woman to please help him, his baby is not
breathing. She runs out of the mall following him and also becomes a victim.

These have been happening in well-lit parking areas, in daylight
as well as nighttime, all over the country. The abductor usually uses a van to
abduct the woman.

'Inside Edition' set up a test in a Mall and 10 out of 15 women
went out of the mall on the Pizza and the PSA scam.
And all of them went out of the mall on the baby scam.

Please pass this along to your friends and family as now that it has been shown on nationwide TV there are bound
to be copycats of
this. The third one I think, is the scariest. You might resist pizza or becoming a
commercial celebrity...but who would be
able to resist a frantic father asking for help for his child? I'm sure that one would get me.

A woman was shopping at the Tuttle Mall in Columbus. She came out
to her car and saw she had a flat. She got her jack and spare out of the trunk. A man in a business suit came up and
started to help her. When the tire had been replaced, he asked for a ride to his car on the
opposite side of the mall. Feeling uncomfortable about doing this, she stalled for a while, but he kept pressing
her. She finally asked why he was on this side of the mall if his car was on the other. He
claimed he had been talking to friends. Still uncomfortable, she told him
that she had just remembered something she had forgotten to pick up at the mall
and she left him and went back inside the mall. She reported the incident to the mall security and they went
out to her car. The man was nowhere in sight. Opening her trunk, she discovered a briefcase
the man
had set inside her trunk while helping her with the tire. Inside were rope and a butcher knife. And, when she
took the tire to be fixed, the mechanic informed her that there was nothing wrong with her tire,
that it was flat because the air had been let out of it.

I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if ! you love your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters,
etc., you may want to
pass it on to them, as well.

Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in
it....better safe than
sorry.

PLEASE BE SAFE AND NOT SORRY! JUST A WARNING TO ALWAYS BE ALERT
AND USE YOUR HEAD!!!

Pass this along to every woman you have access to. Never let your
guard down.

SOMETIMES THAT FEELING IN YOUR GUT IS THE VOICE OF GOD. TRUST YOUR
INSTINCTS!!

Sincerely,

Kelly LeBlanc, PHR
JCPenney Direct Marketing Services
Human Resources

Please ignore any messages regarding this urban legend and please do not pass on any messages regarding it. Passing on these messages only serves to further propagate it.

Note: There was a program from Inside Edition
that did cover mall abduction methods. However there was no corroborating
evidence or real documented incidents using the techniques shown in the
program. Just use your common sense.